The Stars are not Far, Mars Mission 2071. Options

[FrankTrollman]

So 2071 is the time when Mars gets closest to the Earth as it does every 17 years (the last one was 2003). Using Shadowrun technology and the rules presented in Target: Wasteland, one is able to accelerate at one Gravity (9.8 ms/s^2) pretty much all day. And that's fine, because with one day of accelerating at that speed, and one day slowing down at the same rate, you'd have gone 78 million kilometers.

That's convenient, because that's the distance from the Earth to Mars in 2071. Assuming you have sufficient fuel (and you do, because you are refueling your plasma jet on a stable space platform), you can get to the orbit of Mars in just oer 2 days. You could potentially have a mars mission that lasted less than a week.

Yeppers, that's 86,400 seconds a day, for a mid-point velocity of 847 kilometers per second. That's less than 1/3 of 1% of the speed of light, so you can still handwave off relativistic effects. The best part is that the entire trip (except for a hurlariffic experience at the beginning, middle, and end of the trip) would be spent at acceleration equal to normal Earth Gravity. In short, the plasma jet would propel you through space fast enough that it would feel just like you were sitting in a normal room on Earth.

-Frank